


The Uncertainty Principle

by vylit



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, John likes difficult people, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-04
Updated: 2005-12-04
Packaged: 2017-12-20 17:16:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vylit/pseuds/vylit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John loves flying, difficult people, and Atlantis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Uncertainty Principle

When John was ten, he built model airplanes: sharp beaked F-14A Tomcats, slick F-105 Thunderchiefs, smooth lined F-16s. On his way home from school, he'd ride his bike downhill, pushing at the pedals as hard as could, trying to imagine what it would be like to fly his own jet, to go that fast, to be that untouchable.

And when he got home, tired and sweaty, careful to not track in mud, he'd walk past the spotless counters and height organized bookshelves into his room where he'd toss down his book bag and sprawl on the floor to watch The Six Million Dollar Man and The Rockford Files.

Long legs spread out in front of him, John would doodle the math equations he learned in class on military paper and then fold them into airplanes he would fly around the room while he watched TV. Then his dad would come home to bark orders and remind John that "life was a training ground that most people failed" and "people get nowhere in life by looking like a damn hippie." After which, John would spend ten minutes in the bathroom getting his hair to lie flat enough for it to be considered dinner appropriate, but with just enough sticking up to piss his father off.

* * *

John was seventeen when he met his first serious girlfriend. Melissa Walker was short and cute with glasses, a killer smirk, and a 4.0. She hated football, but would sit at his games and take pictures of the crowd, and afterwards, she always begged out of going to after game parties, offering John the option of parking and making out or going it alone.

He hadn't noticed her immediately. She'd transferred in from North Carolina some time their junior year, and while John had seen her around campus with her camera, he hadn't paid attention until they were assigned to do group work in their Calculus class. "I don't expect you to do half of the work, but I've looked at the problems and these seem to be the easiest ones," she'd said, sliding into the chair next to John's and placing a torn sheet of paper with a quarter of the problems they were assigned on top of his notebook.

John raised an eyebrow and looked at her without saying a word.

"I suppose we can meet after school in case there's something you don't understand. Do you have - what are you in again? Hockey? Baseball?"

"Football," John said, leaning back in his chair and watching her nod her head. "We don't --"

"Figures. You look the type."

"-- practice today." John finished, watching her rifle through her bag, and while he knew that he should be offended, was relatively sure that she was actively trying to irritate him, he couldn't help but find it more amusing than annoying.

"Okay. We can meet in the library right after last period. Don't be late."

John smirked and watched her turn back around.

He met her in the library after last period with all of the assigned problems done and waited for the look of "you're not stupid?" to disappear and her to stop saying, "These are right. You did these when?" before asking her out on a date.

Their first date was a movie and dinner - he paid for the movie but she insisted on paying for dinner - where she spilled Pepsi on him, spent an hour talking about the sexism and the feminist movement, and told him that he was far too smart to waste time playing football, and didn't he know that it was wrong the way they turned cheerleaders into objects with their little skirts and underwear flashing.

John had just shrugged. "I wear skin tight pants and spend the night bent over."

John spent the next ten minutes listening to her talk on the needless sexualizing of women as objects rather than as competent people. And while he knew it was probably wrong to get turned on by how smart she was, he didn't try to stop himself from kissing her in the middle of her objects vs. healthy sexual attractiveness speech.

And sometime after their discussion of war as depicted by Platoon but before talking about her love of Lorna Simpson's photography, he'd started telling her about his model airplanes. She'd listened, asking questions that had John making horrible sketches that resembled carrots more than jets on the back of napkins and then folding the napkins into little wobbly imitations of the paper airplanes he usually made in class.

"So, do you want to go out again? You can show me your jet collection," she'd said, stuffing the napkin airplanes into her purse as they pulled up to where she'd met him in her Toyota. "You're an undercover geek. More Steve Guttenberg and less Tom Cruise," she'd said approvingly. "It's sexy."

They were together until they graduated, then he was off to Berkley to major in Physics and she was packed and ready for Wellesley, The Feminine Mystique tucked in her bag next to the course schedule for a Women's Studies major.

He missed her for the first year of college; not enough to call her and violate their decision to make it a clean break, but enough to almost pick up the phone half a dozen times, enough to pull out the book she gave him for Christmas - The Ultimate Paper Airplane.

* * *

The day Mitch and Dex died, they'd flipped Sheppard off as he walked by, yelling over the rotors, "Hey, Shep! Beer and poker? We're taking you down this time."

Regulations said no alcohol, no exceptions, but that didn't mean that all, or even most, of the soldiers followed that. There was always someone willing to go to the stands outside the base where sad faced Afghani men stood next to bottles lined up in endless rows, most of which had names that were unpronounceable, and grab someone a case or two of beer, a bottle of whiskey, or a pitcher of strange, spicy wine that made John's throat tingle and his eyes blur.

It was John's turn, so he threw a smirk in their direction and nodded before pulling himself into his Black Hawk. He'd won five hundred off them since they'd been stationed here, but he had a lot more to go if he was going to buy that Corvette when he got stateside.

That was the last time John saw them alive.

During the inquiry, John sat in his chair, dress uniform starched, and folded and unfolded his paperwork into airplanes as he listened to the evidence against him. He knew that they wanted something out of him, even knew what it was: they wanted him to admit that he was wrong. But John was a good pilot, was told more than once that he was the best in his unit, and he'd had the best chance of getting them out alive.

Except he hadn't.

* * *

The night after Tillison died, John wrote a letter to Tillison's wife and two kids. He told them that Tillison, that _Mark_ was a good soldier, that he was brave, that he died saving people. He didn't tell them that he was the man that killed Tillison --

_"Shep," Tillison said questioningly._

_"We have two men down and Marines that are waiting for us. I plan to pick them up and beat their asses at poker tonight. You have a problem with that, Till?"_

_John could see Tillison straighten. "Fuck no."_

He didn't tell them, but he could hear it between every sentence, could feel the words whisper themselves through every comma.

He never heard back. Maybe Tillison's wife could hear it too.

* * *

In a way, John was relieved when the inquiry was over. His piloting skills and record left him with the option of McMurdo or a desk job, pushing papers until his enlistment was up. There was no question that his career was over. No promotions, no combat missions, no chance for reenlistment. He was done. They were counting time until they could be rid of him, and then his choices were... few in number with each more implausible and earth bound then the next.

So when he heard about Atlantis and Ancients and their need for him with his "necessary and yet, not in any way superior gene," as McKay put it, the first thing he thought was _I might never fly again_.

It wasn't General O'Neill or the cold nothingness of the Antarctica that convinced him to go - he was starting to like the long stretch of white snow that reminded him of flying over an ocean, and his quiet morning jogs - but the sense of connection, of _rightness_ that happened the moment he sat in that chair. It was recognition, like the moment he touched his first jet or the first time he strapped himself into a Black Hawk, so he packed a bag, making sure that he had plenty of loose leaf paper, wrote his father a letter that he addressed to General Robert Sheppard, and spent his last few hours on earth in the air.

* * *

The military hardened John, not with its rules and regulations or its rigidity, but with the part of war that John thought he understood but didn't - death.

When John's mom died, John was eight and playful and hopelessly devoted to her. He helped her carry laundry downstairs, sat with her while she read to him, and watched as she and his father mocked each other's favorite football teams.

At thirty-six, the memories were shadowed, invisible, smoky versions of what they were. He recalled her funeral more than her life. The damp air, clouds low and swollen, and his father's face, streaked with tears. His own eyes stung so much he had to keep them closed when they lowered her into the ground, had to hold his father's arm tighter, as if that would stop his father from leaving, as if he could tie him to the earth with sheer will.

Yet even that didn't prepare him for war. He didn't expect the burned, bloody bodies of his friends. He didn't expect that shock of _what did I do?_ the first time he killed a man. He didn't expect to hold a gun, to fly in something built as a weapon and still feel so utterly powerless to save anyone.

So when he stepped through the gate, when he walked across the smooth floor of Atlantis and saw it light up for them, like it had been waiting, like it was welcoming them, he hadn't been prepared for the feeling of wonder, of _awe_ that swept over him.

And when he sat in the puddlejumper and felt it respond to him, for the first time since his mother died, John felt like he was home.

* * *

John was leaning on the counter, listening to Zelenka and Rodney argue over what a piece of Ancient technology did - Zelenka said it was a most likely a type of hair dryer while Rodney countered with "that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Where did you get your degree again? The Russian University for Challenged Children?" and no actual answer of his own - when Miko scooted next to him and placed her small hand on his arm.

"It works better," she said quietly, gesturing to the paper John didn't even realize he'd been folding, "if you tuck in the corners in the side and cross them over..."

She laid her hands against his and showed him how to fold it, her slim, quick fingers pausing every so often to allow his to catch up. When they were done, it looked less like an airplane and more like a jet - sturdy and aerodynamic with sharp edges.

"There you are, Major," she said, pushing up her glasses and smiling up at him. "This way it'll fly and not fall apart on you."

"It's perfect," John said, absurdly pleased. "Thanks."

"My nephews used to like me to teach them how to make planes and animals from --"

"Oh, can't you find something to do other than harassing my scientists, Major! We have important work to do here, and distracting..."

John grinned through Rodney's tirade, laughing outright when Rodney made mention of how his flirting with the science team was going to get them blown up.

"You know you're the only scientist for me, Rodney," John replied in his best deadpan voice, watching Rodney turn ten different shades of pink and flustered.

* * *

Time passed, and between fighting the Wraith and the Genii, John took things for granted. He knew Elizabeth would always be reasonable, Atlantis would keep any room he was in at his preferred temperature, Rodney would save them when John couldn't, and his team would survive.

It wasn't until Ford - Ford who trusted John with his life, Ford who was strong and good and John's friend - that John remembered what he never should have allowed himself to forget: life was fragile and not even Atlantis, who held onto them all like her favored children, could protect them.

It was that, though not only that, that made John leave a shorter, sturdier version of the jet Miko taught him at Rodney's door.

And when Rodney came to John's quarters to ask about it, his face flushed, his smile flicking on and off, John kissed him, their noses bumping until they figured out which way to turn their heads. And later, when John pulled Rodney into his bed and rubbed against him, arching and moaning and thrusting until they were both hot and sweaty and slick with each other's come, he could feel Atlantis smile.

 

end.


End file.
